Don't Just Sit There -- Learn During Those Training Sessions

LONA O'CONNOR MANAGING YOUR CAREER

June 5, 2000|LONA O'CONNOR MANAGING YOUR CAREER

Do you know how to attend a training session? Show up, stay awake.

No, that's the wrong way to attend a training session.

That's like throwing away money your company is giving you. Sure, many training sessions are ill-conceived and a waste of time. But some aren't. And certainly not every minute of even a lame one is a waste of your time, especially if you decide you are going to squeeze every morsel of useful information out of it.

If it's a great seminar, packed with useful information and inspiring speakers, terrific. Get a lot of ideas and go back to work all charged up. But if it's not quite that good, there are still ways to make it useful:

LOOK FOR IDEAS: Take notes. Not just what you are told to write down, and certainly don't waste your time copying material you're getting on handout sheets. Instead, use your note-taking actively. Jot down ideas that come to you, even if they are not directly related to the topic. They may be more important than what you are supposed to be learning.

Let your mind stay receptive and active. Receptive means you don't immediately reject ideas. Allow them to affect you. Active means you don't accept information just because it's offered. You challenge it, at least in your mind. Ask for clarification; challenge the presenter when you don't understand or agree.

WHY CHALLENGE? A warning about challenging: Proceed cautiously. Some people challenge because they resent being there. They take out their anger on the presenter. The time to vent about the quality of the seminar is on the evaluation form. Use that form to say -- in detail -- how the seminar could have been more valuable. Seminars cost companies money whether they are good or bad, so someone will want to know how to improve them.

At any training session, it's good to ask yourself, `What's the corporate message here?' You soon will know if this session is actually meant to teach you something or if the company is covering its corporate butt or trying to avoid a lawsuit.

If it's the court-ordered kind of seminar, listen and keep your challenges on your notepad.

If it's a real learning session, speak up from time to time. Presenters often get caught up in presenting and forget their audiences.

Don't, however, turn into a professional challenger. That's the person who clearly wants to be holding the microphone, and so he or she challenges every statement made by the presenter. This only prolongs the session and makes everyone else miserable.

BREATHING ROOM: You can also use a training session to gain perspective on your job. For a few hours, such sessions take you out of the daily madness. Take that free time as an opportunity to ponder the larger issues of your work.

This can happen even if the training material itself is not that enlightening. Even if there is little else to capture your professional imagination, at least use the session to give yourself the breathing room to think about your job: how you do it, how you'd like to do it, which parts of it satisfy you, which ones you can change.

Don't sabotage the seminar by distracting yourself. You know what I mean: calling the office on every break, checking your phone mail or, worst of all, actually going back to the office. Of course, it's important to maintain contact with your teammates and boss.

Instead of pulling your thoughts away from the training session, just ask your co-workers to page you if necessary; don't go looking for something to drag you away from training.

And notice if you feel a tad disappointed if no one pages you. This may mean that you may have a little too much of your ego tied up in being needed.

Don't let the training end when you leave the training room. Take responsibility for what you need to learn and find out how to get the information. If you company doesn't provide it, you have access to dozens of resources, from the Internet to your local university. Use them and grow your own new skills.

Next week: Multitasking madness

Write Lona O'Connor at this newspaper or e-mail: lo'connor@sun-sentinel.com or lona13@AOL.com. Please include name, address and phone.